American Airlines to offer one way mileage bookings

by Grant Martin on

Frequent flyer programs are infamous for adding restrictions to possible bookings. Everyone knows that the cheapest reward tier is almost never available when looking for tickets, that numerous fees and surcharges still apply after you redeem your “free” ticket and that miles just aren’t as useful as they once were.

That’s why it’s so befuddling to see one of American Airlines‘ new mileage booking benefits. The nation’s second largest carrier just announced that frequent flyers can now use miles to book one way tickets. No, this doesn’t mean “cash and miles” where you have to pay for 1/2 of your round trip ticket. Now you can simply use 12.5k miles to book a one way ticket and be done with your itinerary.

Why hasn’t this been done before? Airlines are notoriously stingy with miles, and any excuse that they can use to make you spend more miles and incur more fees is usually welcomed. Giving the passenger the flexibility to use miles or cash per leg is, well, unprecedented. And an excellent move by American Airlines, I must add. Hopefully more frequent flyers find their way to AA’s ranks because of this benefit — I know I’ll be taking advantage of it.

Starwood Preferred Guest program integrates flight bookings

by Grant Martin on

Many business travelers hold a variety of memberships across the travel industry — a Priority Club membership for points towards Holiday Inn stays, a Skymiles number for miles towards Delta flights, an Emerald Club membership for National rental cars. All of these come in handy for that one time that you’re actually on vacation and want to reap some benefit for all of those days on the road with the company.

If you’re anything like me, you also might accrue your points unevenly; I have a zillion miles on NW but only a few Hilton Honors points because usually when I travel places I stay with friends. Similarly, others might have many hotel or car rental points because their trips are longer or they don’t fly places. Airlines realize this and want you to waste your miles in any way possible, so often craft up ways to purge miles irresponsibly (see our recent article on silly frequent flyer mile auctions).

In that guise, Starwood Hotels’ member program Starwood Preferred Guest has cooked up an engine to use their SPG points to book plane tickets in addition to hotel stays. The nice thing is that the number of points required is tied to the price of the ticket — it isn’t poorly determined by route or demand — so prices are somewhat tied to the open market.

The not-so-nice thing is that it isn’t a super value for your SPG points. Most SPG members I’ve lurked over are finding that it’s just more fiscially responsible to book expensive hotel rooms with points and pay for plane tickets with cash (or sell your SPG points for cash which, ooops, is illegal).

But hey, if you’re rife with miles and aren’t too anal retentive about them, this could be a way to get a few free plane tickets. Check out SPGflights.com for details on the promotion.